to find it so difficult to keep my house tidy

[L8rAllig8r]

I just don't know why. I was the same with my bedroom as a child, leave it for ages then have a huge blitz, and it's followed me into adulthood. I want a tidy house. When I've thoroughly blitzed it I LOVE it. I find myself staying up later just to enjoy the tidiness. But it never lasts more than a week tops, and then the mess seems to get on top of me so quickly, which demotivates me even more. I end up thinking, what's the point, it'll be a state again by tomorrow.

I'm a single parent of a nearly 3 year old and want a nicer home for him. I'm bidding on some more storage on eBay to cope with the sheer volume of toys but it's not really space I lack (even though the house is tiny, there's only 2 of us and I haven't got much stuff), it's motivation. Even though I love it tidy, I don't want to clean EVERY day, but if I don't by day 2 it's a tip again and I go back into the spiral of what's the point of tidying, it'll only get messy again...

Any advice/tips to help me kick this longterm? I'm going to settle in for a huge blitz today and would love it to last longer this time.

Op, CHUCK THEM

He will have birthdays AND Christmas to give him new stuff- dont HOARD things in your loft

And when he does get new stuff, chuck out old stuff

I love decluttering, can you tell?

I think if you do a little bit everyday, not only does your house look tidier and cleaner, but I actually think it takes less time overall than a blitz every so often.

another vote for flylady. Takes no time at all and house looks vaguely respectable great.

Thank you so much for starting this thread
i m jst the same. wen younger i mostly relied on sister with whom i shared my room (poor soul). now i do the blitz thing once every two weeks.
but i do a lot of crash dieting too so mayb its something to do with my personality. thanks for the tips people

I hear you

I am on a declutter purge and I must say I feel better for it

I think storage is the key, definately, chuck what you dont need and make storage for what you do, then once things are tidier you can make the place prettier

Think I might buy myself a reward chart and buy something nice if I stick to a rota type system for a month. Like RalphGnu said, change sheets on Monday, bathroom on Tuesday etc. I do generally have a quick put away of toys at bedtime but it feels like a drop in the ocean. Just need to think of a reward I really want and can afford!

all of the above!
i too was very messy as a kid & for most of my adulthoood so far. Started to sort myself out a couple of years ago & so glad i did, we ahve a 3.4yr old & 6mnth old & would live under a pile of crap If i hadnt pulled my finger out.

a few tips that worked for us (sorry for any duplicate ideas)........

A little bit each day (after your initial blitz!)

We have a MASSIVE weekly wall planner, magnetic blackboard paint, painted directly on to the wall. we have seperate catergories, housekeeping, admin, kids activity/outing, events & appointments. each catergory has a different coloured strip of paper stuck to tiny magnets. Jobs get written on the strip & stuck on wall calender as & when they come along, if it doesnt get done that day it gets moved on to the next day. All house keeping jobs, change beds, clean loo`s that get done regularly/every week, get divvyied out aroung the other more fun activities. (we hardly look at planner for day to day jobs now, become second nature!) you can also write drectly on the blackboard with chalk. The weekly grid is done in chalk pens. This is a bit of a pain to begin with but have found it massivly helpfull. my husband is dyslexic and its has really helpped him put some visual order in his week. My little boy loves it now as well & enjoys picking activities out of the tub & putting them on himself ;)

I have lots of medium sized stacking boxes with lids, all labled, cars, people, animals, shop & food etc - found it much easy to tidy stuff away (especially with 3yr old helping) and then find it again when you need it. we have a couple of mixed boxes, labeled thus for weird odds and sods you end up with.
Lots of samller tubs/boxes for craft stuff, for same reason.

Purge regulary - take stuff to charity shop, local hostal etc. It good for kids to know some others have less than them. If it becomes habit for you it will ve hait for your little one too.

ask people not to get large pressies - darling would llove some books this christmas/birthday usually works ;)

Never leave a room/go up or down the stairs with out taking something with you & putting it away.

Im sure there are more, but for now, finally, let some things go, not everything has to be squeeky clean & mum tidy ( my mum has loads of storage too ;( ) for example, my windows havnt beeen cleaned since we moved in, just not a priority. ill wash them when we move out.

good luck op, you can do it!

I've struggled with this, too. My mum's super tidy, so that makes me feel even worse as I feel I should have inherited that particular gene!

I've got better - since I posted about it on MN, actually. People gave me lots of ideas and advice, and it was good to know that not everyone lives in a spotless paradise.

Little and often is my new motto. I try to do a room a day, plus keep up with washing, and I clean the kitchen everyday and swish the bathroom every morning.

And storage boxes are a must. Plus every few weeks I go through and throw things away that haven't been touched/used for ages.

I take it he has his own bedroom? What I couldn't cope with would be if my DD had her own bedroom, yet her toys still took over the living area. I really think toys should predominantly be kept to the bedroom, with a limited amount reserved for the living room and of course kept in a storage box. Of course, that might not be manageable for those with more than 1 child...

Come join us on a new fly lady thread!!

I found after separating from my OH and having three late teens in the house that two things made a real difference:

1. a regular trip to the tip/recycling bins etc was very satisfying, clearing out things that leapt out as being surplus, creating more space and
2. just getting on with the 'normal' stuff like washing up / washing everyday straightaway after getting in work - till it was done

Things used to get left - now that doesn't work.

in other words just do it - and don't think about whether you like the idea or it is too much. You will get into a routine and feel so much better.

Oh yes and make sure the children do their bit

what cyb said. all of it.

you have got to just chuck. I go into our toy/play room with a bin bag every few weeks and just chuck, chuck, chuck. Little parts of toys that have no purpose - gone. broken toys that will never be fixed - gone. old comics/ripped up books/damaged stuff - gone. toys that never get played with - donate. all the pictures/paintings/craft crap - CHUCK.

I love to declutter.
unclutterer.com
try having a nosy around that website above for inspiration/motivation

I used to be crap but am getting better. Am now especially ruthless with clothes. There's 3 dc here and we were drowning under a sea of laundry but I'm quickly bagging up too-small things and handing them down now, or using those charity bags you get around and getting rid of a bag or two every few weeks. feels brilliant.

fustyarse lets live together- can you imagine how tidy we woudl be?

I'm not a single mother and I can't keep the house tidy at all . To be fair, we've had builders in for the past 9 months (finally finished, but the dust is still settling, quite literally) - the house needs a really good scrub rather than just a quick dust and hoover.

I just don't get how to keep it tidy - it used to be immaculate before DD was born and I don't know what's happened. I'm putting things away in one room, and a little tornado is busy pulling them out twice as fast in another room.

I did ask my mother (she had 3 under 4 and the house was always presentable as I remember) and she said that a) we have five times as much stuff (yeah - mostly theirs or DH's parents' junk that they think we'll find "useful"! Honestly, we have three inherited bureaus and an inherited dressing table dumped in our dining room, and no useful storage to speak of), b) DD has too many toys (most of which were bought for her by her grandparents - 37 presents at Christmas is taking the mickey) and c) they had a 1960s house in the 1970s with a couple of large rooms. We have a 1900 house with bits falling off, lots of small rooms and all sorts of elaborate dust-collecting period details. So it's not just that I'm a totally inadequate mother.

It's getting a bit better with DD now (24m) - she and I play the "cleaning game" and I give her a mini-duster (feather dusters are a particular favourite) and she has her own mini-Henry vacuum cleaner and follows me around. It's slow as she gets in the way, but better than nothing. And we play the "tidying away game" before milk/bedtime story - who can put the most things in a box.

Oh well, better get off the computer and go and do some tidying!

OP - I am with you.

Sadly my children and DH are all hideously untidy too but I'm the only person who ever picks anything up.

I have cried about the state of the house several times this holiday.

I seem to be cleaning and tidying all the time.

Those who seem to be cleaning/tidying all day

you either have to

get everyone to pitch in and IGNORE the moaning
or lower your standards, and do bare minimums

OP i am the same as you, and embarassingly, i know the answers, i just dont put them into practise.

this is what you need to do (and i am saying this with total understanding of how much motivation it will take for you to complete this)

1. you need to de-clutter your house dwn to literally only what you use and need. so toys, clothes, that sewing machine you keep because you want to start making things some day. you need to sell, charity shop and dump as much as possble.

2. with that done, you will know exactly what storage you actually need. you will probably find you are left with empty cupboards/shelves

3. re-arrange all the rooms in the house so they work best with how you use it. is all the furniture necessary? coul some of it be sold/given away to make space for actually living in?

4. depending on your financial situation could you re-decorate the rooms you use most often? this will give you a fresh start so you have something nice and new to maintain. have a look through some decor mags and find a look you love and know you will want to keep looking good.

5. i have 3 things i must do daily before we leave the house. i wash all the dishes and wipe the counters and table, then i hoover and mop downstairs. then i hang the washing out/up on racks depending on weather.

6. 3 more things i do daily when dinner is done, i do all dishes/counters/table n sweep and mop the kitchen, i make the dcs put all toys back in toy tubs, ad put all the washing in the dryer for 15 minutes. it gets folded and put away while dcs ae in the bath.

what works for me is doing the same things everyday. i notice that if i leave the breakfast dishes with a thought to doing them later then it knocks my whole day off. the counters and table remain crumby, so then i dont do the floors etc. it puts me in bad form for the day and by the time dinner is done there ae so many dishes it seems too much to do so i dont do it. also, you need to be strict with your down time. before i come on MN i set myself a time by which i will be off it again and getting stuck into something. i also think it's really important how you start your day. if i wake up an a already running late, it makes me feel like the whole day isnt worth bothering with so i try to get to bed at a reasonal time and wake up on time, feeling good.

Just joined Flylady :)

ok cyb, but let's leave our dc elsewhere - or donate them? after all, the majority of crap in my house belongs to them

OP, you're getting great advice here. flylady is a good start, think she advocates chucking/donating 15 things a day as a kind of 'babysteps' decluttering technique. this is a good idea, imo

so go around a room/your house with a bin bag and try this. it does work.

I have spent two years decluttering my flat and I still find it too messy. I need a big house in the country.

But great thread, some good ideas.

I'm exactly the same as you OP, and will now go and write my list of things to do!

My way of thinking is, I have 2 DC and one on the way - why bother? We live in a small house, even with masses more storage it would still be small and they would still throw their clothes/toys/books all over the place. OH is pretty good, but if something has sat in the same place for more than an hour he doesn't tend to see it hence him tripping over his own clothes on the bottom stair

You will get bizillions of emails every day...I generally just tend to ignore everything but the Mission one and the Riley one lol

If you do sign up for fly lady, make sure you get the daily digest, then you only need to delete get one email a day!

I pick a room to tidy once the kids are in bed, then phone a friend. By the time we've caught up on all our chat, the room is done & I haven't even realised I was doing it!

I'm ashamed to admit that I don't do a lot of cleaning, I really hate it. But - if the house looks tidy and deccluttered it doesn't look bad and when I do come to clean it it's easy! Everything has a place, stuff always gets put back and I am constantly decluttering, a bit at a time - there's always a charity bag on the go and better bits get ebayed. I clear out toys before christmas and birthdays, constantly getting rid of mcdonalds toys etc.

It's a constant battle because DH is a bit of a hoarder and has to be forced strongly encouraged to get rid of stuff.

The key is forcing yourself to tidy and sort as you go, it's a lot easier than a huge blitz and it only needs 10-15 mins at a time.

IMO
1.However much room and storage you have you will fill the space if you never de clutter
2.It is so much easier to clean with no clutter around.

It can seem such a huge task. Don"t think I"ll sort out the toys today. Instead, think, I"ll sort out the board games/dressing up box - whatever. Don"t think I"ll clean the kitchen. Instead, think, I"ll wipe the cupboard fronts.

Do the bare basics every day plus one or more bite size tasks and keep it up!